Keep Your Mouth Shut, Keep Your Guard Up
by Tamer Lorika
Summary: <html><head></head>Hercules Hansen does not understand why Hermann won't just tell him why he got in a fight with the new J-Tech. It's obvious who came out worse for wear. (My contribution to Gottbleed week)</html>


Umm so I crawled out of semi-retirement to participate in Gottbleed week. Hi.

If you're wondering what I've been up to, it's mostly gay, and it's available for sale on Amazon, just search Tamer Lorika. I have a novel and two short stories.

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><p><em>Hermann Gottlieb, accuracy aside, has always presented himself as a military man<em>, thought a beleaguered Hercules Hansen. It was a terrible thing that today was the day that Hercules finally believed him. The similarity to the other pig-headed enlisted J-Techs was all too apparent.

The man in question stood before him now, throwing a salute with, for once, no sense of self-importance. "Marshall Hansen."

"Mister Gottlieb," Hercules returned. "This is unexpected".

Gottlieb did not lower his hard gaze, another first for Hercules' relationship with the man. Hercules was able to see every burst vessel in Gottlieb's eye, the answering bloom in the broken skin around the socket. There was a slow trickle of blood dripping across Gottlieb's lips from his nose, but the man did not move to wipe it away. Rather, he stood heavily at attention, listing slightly with his grip on the cane. His knuckles were raw and blood threatened to bead there as well.

"I'm supposed to ask you for your side of the events."

He'd already gone through this with Alois, the French J-tech who had been the other half of the recent altercation. The tech had been sporting nothing more dramatic than a fat lip and an air of wounded pride, and had mumbled a faintly: "I hit him on accident, and he went off on me like a thing possessed."

Considering the distinct lack of cane-shaped bruises anywhere on his person, Marshal Hansen was not inclined to believe this. He knew first-hand how hard Hermann could swing that thing, and how liberal he could be with its use.

Frustratingly, however, Hermann was drawing up a tight-lipped countenance far from his usual. The flood of official complaints to HR was not from any urge that Hermann had to protect his fellow Shatterdome inmate.

But all he would say today was "I was in the wrong," his accent slightly more German than usual.

Hansen tried again. "Why did I find you in a physical confrontation with Alois Bonnefoy?"

If possible, Hermann grew even stiffer, his face hardening—except for the obscene softness of his bruises. "Alois Bonnefoy did not mean to hit me. However, when he did, I am afraid I exhibited some aspects of the biological 'fight or flight' impulse."

Hansen raised an eyebrow. "Fight or flight?"

"I'm sure my colleague Doctor Geiszler could explain the mechanic of it to you much more accurately, Marshal, although I believe it is a survival reaction to environmental shocks." There was no sneer on his face, but his tone implied one regardless.

_Save me_, though Hansen, _from whatever misguided loyalties these people bring._ He had not wanted leadership.

"Hermann, give me a straight answer," Hercules sighed, hoping to play on the familiarity of their acquaintance. "None of this is adding up. For fucks sake, you busted your knuckles. If you'd been fighting back properly, you'd have used your cane."

This time, Hermann _did_ sneer, and with the blood on his lips it looked grotesque. "I hardly think it _would_ be proper, Marshal. Using a weapon in a fair flight is an unsporting advantage." Which was contradictory on many levels, but Hercules was both annoyed and impressed to find out he had been backed into a corner. There was no one on earth who was brave or cruel enough to point out that Hermann Gottlieb without his cane was _not_ a sporting adversary in any physical circumstances. The evidence to this conclusion was clear—despite the damage to Hermann's person, Alois only looked, at the very worst, as if his lip had been stung by a bee. A frustrating, German bee.

This wasn't getting solved this way, and Hercules realized with resentment that today was yet another thing to be filed in a box marked "Things I Can't Change". As long as whatever this was didn't happen again—and Hercules' instincts told him it _probably_ would not—he was just going to have to let it go.

The Marshal cracked his knuckles in nervous habit. Hermann watched him warily. He was starting, very gently and almost imperceptibly, to tremble.

"Dismissed," muttered Hansen, holding the door open himself. Hermann walked past him and down the hall, only to be enthusiastically hailed by one Doctor Geiszler, who kept looking back at Hercules as if he expected him to strike. As they shuffled away, Hercules realized that he hadn't asked the most important question: If not Hermann, who _had_ Alois been trying to hit?

"Herm, dude, come here and lean on me—"

"If you would be so kind as to _step away_, Doctor Geiszler."

"Dude." Newton had bounced in front of Hermann and abruptly stopped, almost toppling his partner. "You do not get to 'Doctor' me right now. Actually, I get to doctor you."

It was a compromise they had laid out two years ago, when Hermann had fount Newton literally stitching up his own calf after slashing it open one drunken night in Sydney. The man had raised holy hell when Hermann had tried to get him to Medical, but by that point newton was shaking too hard to provide effective first aid. After a particularly worrisome shouting match, they had come up with a compromise: Hermann would finish the job, give him antibiotics, and generally patch him up to the best of his triage training, but only if Newton agreed to put up absolutely no fuss. None. No whining about being coddled, no complaint about staying in bed—and if anything, anything at all got even a bit worse, he would be in Medical so fast his head would spin.

Apparently, this was an acceptable enough agreement. Herman could even sympathize with the reticence to attend hospital—and when, two months later, his leg seized so hard he passed out and newton found him "on the floor of the goddam lab, babe, you were like two feet from a tub of Blue!", Hermann invoked the same privilege. He needed muscle relaxants and rest, not a slew of unfamiliar—they had moved to Hong Kong by this point—doctors clucking over his diagnosis.

It was almost harder to swallow his pride in the face of a single man than in that of the indistinguished hordes of medical professionals. Something about familiarity, about being vulnerable. But Newton had been his constant partner, had seen him in the passions of hatred, of orgasm, of despair. Their drift compatibility had, really, come as no surprise. If every human did have a partner, then for Hermann Gottlieb it could be no other than Newton Geiszler. Vulnerability in front of Newton was only as traumatizing as the same in front of his own self.

Today, however he did not give in as quickly. He could make it to their quarters, he thought, if he stiffened his spine just a little more and—

-He did not realize he had over-balanced until he found himself fairly puddled across Newton's deceptively solid shoulders, his cane somewhere on the floor, his energy completely gone.

"Oof—okay, Herm. Good to see you giving in. Let's get you patched up and in bed."

Hermann was _not_ giving in, but he knew that. Newton was trying to get a rise out of him, but Hermann found that he simply had no more energy.

It was a darkly pleasing experience to be cared for by Newton, but Hermann had never before allowed himself to enjoy it. In his childhood, it had been a shameful thing to need care from others, and he learned self-sufficiency as a way to save his own pride. It was a testament to his utter emptiness that there was no further protest he could think to make.

Newton, to his credit, was both quiet and gentle. He cooed over the state of Hermann's eye and nose, but determined them to need nothing more than ice and rest. The knuckles were harder, and resulted in antiseptic that stung mightily and a wrapping job that was unsightly but serviceable. Hermann was given water and industrial-strength painkillers. He was also forced to eat a granola bar and only the agreed upon ban on fussing stopped him from rejecting it outright.

"Babe, you hadn't eaten in twelve hours even _before_ your adrenaline burned up," Newton explained. Hermann didn't even bother glaring; he was about to fall asleep.

Finally, Newton took mercy on him and eased him into bed, spooning up behind him after determining that it wouldn't jar any of his injuries. As always, Newton was a human furnace, and his arms practically burned where they laid across Hermann's ribs.

The painkillers and lethargy were so potent that Hermann didn't even twitch when Newton finally asked him the question that had been pulsing between them that entire horrendous evening. "Hermann…why?"

It would have been very hard to explain, even if Hermann _had_ been operating on full mental capacity. They had been ready to eat their first meal in twelve hours in the mess, after a full day of furious data-recovery that had spawned from an inept technical error surrounding the transition of K-Science from a wartime bureau to a fully-funded research division. Newton had, from the beginning, been very much against letting anyone but Shatterdome techs have access to his digital data and when the United Nations had "accidentally deleted" important files on Kaiju liver samples he had gone a bit berserk. The files were eventually recovered in part, but it had made for a testy, manic Newt who had been spoiling for a fight.

Hermann had seen it coming, recognizing it for what it was: a quirk of Newton's already abnormal character and one that he could redirect fairly easily. Hermann was happy to argue with Newton over even the most inane subject, partially because it let off some of Newton's mental energies in a fairly benign manner, and partially because the oral repartee was stimulating in a twisted and possibly unhealthy way. However, before they could work up a decent rhythm, one of the new J-Techs had jostled Newton's tray and sent food everywhere.

The one thing Hermann could say was that Alois Bonnefoy was not even remotely repentant for his rudeness. There would always be a jock and nerd dichotomy in various formats in the Shatterdome, and sometimes it resulted in class friction among Shatterdome residents. However, this fairly minor slight redirected Newton's frustration into a highly inadvisable and patently prejudiced rant that impugned the man's honor, sexuality, his mother's naming capabilities for her child, a few choice words about his nationality, and an absolutely uncalled for list of inferences on his lifestyle and intelligence. In short, it was the sort of thing that, had it been reported, could have resulted in UN public relations backlash that no amount of celebrity status could have saved Newton from. Neither scientist had quite gotten used to the public scrutiny that they faced on a professional level following the closing of the Breach, and Newton especially did not ever know when to keep his mouth shut.

None of this mattered, however, because instead of filing a formal injunction, Alois had gone the other expected route and attempted to haul off and punch Newton's lights out.

That was when Hermann's thought processes grew hazy. He remembered understanding with complete clarity that Alois' intention was to injure Newton, and saw him aim for a dangerously vulnerable part of Newton's skull. After that, Hermann retained only a single line of reasoning.

_No, please, not him._

He did not remember moving, but only moments later he was reeling with staggering pain, tempered by a fierce and involuntary sense of relief as he heard Newton's roar of uninjured indignation behind him. His cane was somewhere on the floor next to him, but he didn't have time to grab it before he saw Alois advance. In hindsight, the J-Tech had looked stricken to have hit the wrong target (and a disabled one at that) and looked to be only checking on his health, but Hermann had not necessarily been disingenuous about the fight-or-flight response and had staggered up to slug the man in the face. Hermann's negligible upper body strength had served to make the impact hardly relevant, however, and then Marshal Hansen was on the scene.

The rest had been merely formality. Neither accidental combatant could admit to the real events of the afternoon: Alois had been ready to beat the shit out of one of the People That Saved The World, after all. And if Hermann admitted Newton's involvement in the matter, it could have spelled real and lasting professional injury. Better to take the blame himself. He already sported the bruises from it.

There was a perfectly eloquent and well-reasoned way to explain all of this to Newton, and Hermann would eventually reason out what it was. In the meantime, what came out was: "'ve got to protect you, Newt'n," which, in the morning, would be regarded as an embarrassingly slurred and inappropriate neglect of grammar. Right now, it just felt like the truth.


End file.
